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The Dragon Boat Festival today (June 19) will see housewives are wrapping glutinous rice with bamboo or reed leaves, which are, according to tradition, thrown into rivers to spare from the fish's mouths the body of a patriotic poet who drowned more than 2,000 years ago.
The poet, Qu Yuan, lived in the state of Chu during the Warring States period (475 B.C. to 221 B.C.). He drowned himself in the Miluo River in today's Hunan Province in 278 B.C., on fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese lunar calendar, hoping his death could awaken the king to revitalize the kingdom.
The date has since been remembered as the Dragon Boat Festival, or Duanwu Festival, on which local fishermen row dragon boats along the Miluo river to search for Qu Yuan and scatter glutinous rice dumplings in the water to prevent the fish from eating his body.
"Many Chinese were hurt when the Republic of Korea's application to list Duanwu as its own cultural heritage was accepted by UNESCO in 2005," said Chen Jing, a professor of folk culture with the Nanjing University. "But it's a shame to see that many of us still take the occasion as one merely for eating snacks or for showing off wealth."
The whole nation needs to look back to the spirit of its traditional culture on these centuries-old holidays, experts say.
"Our forefathers believed that people were most susceptible to disease in the fifth month of the lunar calendar, also the hottest time of the year," said Gao Chengyuan, a specialist on folk customs based in Tianjin. "On Duanwu Festival, people got up early to collect dew to cleanse their eyes and drink liquor to ward off snakes and mosquitoes."
Children in particular would wear sachets filled with herbs and spices and aprons embroidered with the five evils - scorpion, toad, spider, snake and centipede - as mascots to protect them through the summer, said Gao.
Through certain rituals, people would put the "evil spirits" onboard dragon boats and compete to see whose bad luck was sent farther away, which was how the occasion got the name of "Dragon Boat Festival".
Many riverside towns in central and southern China still organize dragon boat races ahead of the festival, though many admit the holiday is more associated with eating than the race.
"We need to save from traditional culture from disappearing," said Prof. Chen Jing from Nanjing University. "Otherwise we'll lose even more heritage items."
Editor: Wing
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